


by the hands of this extraneous evil

by Panny



Category: The Strange Case of Mr. Hyde (Dark Horse Comics)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Casefic - now with more supernatural horror than in canon, Folklore, M/M, Urban fantasy casefic based on folklore, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-14 21:41:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28927494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Panny/pseuds/Panny
Summary: Struggling to escape the specters of his past investigations, Inspector Thomas Adye finds himself drawn into yet another strange case. All is not well on London's streets, but Tom might just get by with a little help from an old mate.
Relationships: Implied Thomas Adye/Dorian Gray, Thomas Adye/Edward Hyde | Henry Jekyll
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4
Collections: Bulletproof 20/21





	by the hands of this extraneous evil

**Author's Note:**

  * For [within_a_dream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/within_a_dream/gifts).



> Title taken from Robert Louis Stevenson's _Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde_.
> 
> Canon primer and other notes at the end!

If the good Lord had any sense of dramatic timing, the constable would have interrupted the morning sermon about fifteen minutes earlier. The way the sun cut into the appropriately somber shadows that lined the pews might have resonated a bit better with the part about _light_ and _dark_ and the power struggle between the two. But one could not hold life accountable for missed opportunities of symbolic coherence.

One certainly could, however, hold Peelers accountable for dawdling at the end of the aisle, either too pious or too nervous to intrude all the way. Whatever sense of urgency had driven the entrance had been apparently abandoned at the threshold like the world’s unluckiest bride. It was tempting to see how long it might take the man to muster up initiative, but Tom rose to his feet with barely a sigh. If you couldn’t be the bigger man in God’s house on a Sunday, when could you be?

 _It’s times like this when I miss poor Tamberly_. The thought was there before he could put a stopper on it and he grimaced, hunching his shoulders a little closer to his ears. It wasn’t the time, even if it was exactly the place for that kind of self-flagellation.

“When there’s been a murder, Constable, you need not wait on the faithful to finish with their _amens_. God would understand, I’m sure.” The words were gentler than he planned them to be, but he couldn’t regret the slightly relieved sagging of the Peeler’s face as they stepped into the glare of sunshine past the church doors. Or, well, the closest that London ever saw to it, at any rate.

“Well, it’s—ah—not exactly a murder, sir.”

“Not a murder?” Tom said, lingering over each word, almost tasting his own bemusement. “Well, then what the devil did you get me for?” There was no heat in the question. He was puzzled, yes, but not angry. Not a murder! It was always a murder. What a novel idea, going a whole morning without anyone having spent the night killing anyone else.

“It’s a bit peculiar, sir,” the Peeler said, which at least made some kind of sense. He had made a name for himself between Utterson and Griffin and Gray. Strange cases were rather the standard set at this juncture.

Still. “I don’t mean to be difficult, but by the time they call me in, there’s usually a body for me to look at.” At least one body, anyway. Often more.

“Well,” said the Peeler, “there is a body they want you to look at, Chief Inspector.”

For all that Tom’s green days were far behind him, he had never given much thought to the realities of prisons. His most infamous quarries had fallen into a disturbing pattern of never quite making it that far. Utterson hadn’t given him a choice. Griffin had done it to himself. And Dorian— _Gray_. Well. He still didn’t entirely understand what had happened to Gray.

Tom was well-attuned to the irony that the more illustrious elements of his career had been proceeded by a visit to a prison cell—a hand reaching through the bars that even then (especially then) he should have known better than to grasp. Hyde was not Tom’s bogeyman—it might have been easier if he could blame the way the mere thought of him made his spine prickle on terror alone—but his voice still visited him sometimes, in dark corners. _The chase is such a thrill, but you’re not so keen on the after, are you, Tom?_ it said now. _Can’t say I blame you. Justice is a pretty idea with such a disappointing reality. Still, what would dear old dad say?_

Not much, if the rest of Tom’s life was anything to go by.

“You’re certain nobody would have been able to get in?” Tom asked, stingingly aware of his own extended silence. He’d been used to courting odd looks and unstated doubts about his sanity, but it was another thing altogether to tread so close to believing them. And besides, it was easier to examine the prison walls, to mull over their height and solidity, than to focus on the clearest point of interest in the room.

“It’s a prison, sir,” the Peeler said, voice carefully neutral.

“Indeed,” Tom said, equally mild. It was a well-guarded prison at that, though surely the guards expected to have to worry about prisoners getting out more so than ne’er-do-wells sneaking in. “I don’t imagine they expend many resources guarding the gallows,” he said aloud, finally turning his eyes toward the eerie swaying of the rope. “Not too many escape attempts from dead men.”

“No, sir,” the Peeler answered dutifully, though the confirmation could hardly have felt required. But the Ripper had leaped twenty feet from London’s rails. The Invisible Man—well, it was in the name. It was a bit embarrassing, frankly, that they hadn’t already taken precautions against the impossible.

“Is it customary for them to…leave the bodies out like that?” Overnight, must have been. Tom was glad of his strong stomach.

“I wouldn’t know, sir. Can’t say I’ve thought of it much. They moved the hangings behind the wall ages ago.”

“In sixty-eight, yes.” He’d always thought it a civilized thing, taking away the spectacle of it all, but now he wondered if it was just a new way to be cruel. He wouldn’t be able to look through this man’s file until he was seated at his desk, but he wondered what there could possibly be within it that would justify this kind of indignity. Even before the…vandalism.

Tom knelt beside the body, careful of the trapdoor, left open for the man’s feet to dangle into the dark. The stump of the man’s wrist was ugly to look at (inexpertly sawed from an awkward angle—surely, it would have been easier to take the body down first) but informative. Not even the faintest trace of healed flesh but not so much blood as one might have expected the wound to account for. An injury given long post-mortem. To what end?

“What was this man’s crime, Constable?”

“I believe it was murder, sir.”

Tom hummed tunelessly under his breath, turning the thought over. It was evident the man had been well-built in life, even with his limbs sagging as they were. Gingerly, Tom lifted the man’s remaining hand—the left, no wedding band—for closer inspection. Rough, calloused, but maybe not as much as he expected to find on a labourer. It was quite possible that the callouses on the absent appendage might have been thicker, the fingers more well-used. The dominant hand. Perhaps, the killing hand. “The hand—have they found it, yet?”

“No, sir.”

He let the arm go, taking care not to watch the way it swung afterward. “And nothing else was taken? No one else was—harmed? Missing?”

“No, sir.”

Tom stood, pushing his hair away from his face. Vengeance he could understand, but why take the hand afterward? And why bother with any of it after the man was already dead? “I want everything we know about this man on my desk by the time I get back to the Yard. In the meantime, I’ll need to speak to any guard who was on duty last night.” Tom took one last look around the scene, trying to internalize as many details as possible. “And for God’s sake,” he said at last, “somebody let the poor sod down.”

All in all, John Stanway had been a disappointingly ordinary man who had committed a disappointingly ordinary crime. By all accounts, a hardworking man, if not an exceedingly kind one. A quick temper, a fondness for drink, free with his money when he was in his cups. An argument over a game of cards had broken bad. Stanway had had beaten a man to death with his bare hands. Hand, rather—it appeared a solid right hook had done most of the work.

The victim hadn’t had much in the way of family, but that didn’t mean that no one mourned him. Enough to hold a grudge against Stanway? Maybe. Hard to imagine it being worth breaking into a prison to carry out. Stanway had gone quietly when the police had come for him, had been sentenced, had been hanged. Had been dead long before anyone got to him. It didn’t add up.

Stanway hadn’t been anyone important. Neither had his victim. The crime wouldn’t have even been worth gossip in Whitechapel. Who would go to all that trouble to desecrate his corpse? And why would they keep his hand?

By the time Tom left Scotland Yard, the streets were dark and quiet. He’d left the case file on his desk and the thought of it itched at him with every step of distance.

In their houses, the citizens slept.

It was still early when Tom made his way back to the Yard. This wasn’t unusual. He had no one waiting for him at home to linger over, no close friends to keep him out late the night before. His work was, if not the greatest pleasure of his life, then at least the greatest source of stimulation, which was nearly as compelling. The only place he’d spent many hours outside of work and home in the past month had been church and even that had been weened down to a Sunday affair.

His faith had not been shaken by the things which he had experienced—if anything, God seemed only more plausible next to the dark impossibilities crafted by the minds of men. Prayer, though. He had his doubts about the usefulness of prayer. Surely his work did more good for the world than any man who took to his knees and tried to call down some higher mercy. He hoped it did.

Tom had slept poorly when he’d slept at all, his mind running itself over the scrambled pieces of a puzzle he couldn’t fit together. Every shadow had been Stanway’s hanging body. Not a nightmare. A reminder.

Tom’s nightmares, when he had them, were much more vivid. They were all red, in varying shades. Mary Jane’s hair, Mary Jane’s blood. An expensive cabernet in a crystal glass, full lips shaped around a charming baritone laugh, his own eyes in the mirror after a night of indiscretion.

Other times, he was kept from rest by bumps in the night, no longer able to believe his own eyes when they told him there was nothing there. That comfort had been stolen from him irrevocably.

On occasion, he was still chased into slumber by the memory of glowing green eyes, an unnatural hue he had never seen elsewhere. He was only disturbed by how little their memory disturbed him.

One of the side benefits to an early arrival was that the Yard was usually still quiet. If things did pick up, which they still did regrettably often, then it wouldn’t remain quiet for long after the sun finished rising. But that just made those still moments—those peaceful, thinking, solitary moments—that much easier to treasure.

So, when he arrived to find every lamp lit and the night shift engaged in urgent conversation with the earliest arrivals, it was an ill omen for the coming day.

“Has something happened, Constable?” He kept his voice low, but the Peeler hunched over his desk—Barker? Barlow?—still startled at the sound of it. He blinked up at Tom for a bleary moment before abruptly stiffening when he realized by whom he was being addressed. That was a novelty that still hadn’t fully worn off, though Tom wasn’t actually sure he enjoyed it.

“Nothing to concern yourself with, Chief Inspector. There was a break in at the Moreau house last night. The doctor’s being rather difficult about the investigation—doesn’t want us poking around, says nothing irreplaceable was lost. But two of his live-in staff were killed in the scuffle and the higher ups are throwing their weight around.” The Peeler took an exaggerated glance around the room before lowering his voice conspiratorially. “It’s all just politics, if you ask me. They only want us to look so bad because he said we couldn’t. Imagine harassing a physician like that.”

“It’s always politics, Constable.” Tom pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed, the lack of sleep suddenly descending on him with a vengeance. There did not exist a time, in his professional opinion, when it was not too early in the day for politics. The powers that be probably were only bothering because they couldn’t let a challenge to their authority stand, but Moreau could go to Hell and all if he was letting a stupid power squabble get in the way of an investigation when two of his staff were dead. “Let me know if I can be of any assistance.”

The Peeler waved him off, already slouching back toward the surface of his desk. Tom made a too grateful escape to his office.

The longer Tom stared at the contents of the file, the more he was convinced that he was approaching the case all wrong. No amount of shuffling or rearranging had made what he had on hand any more illuminating. The guards had had little insight to offer beyond the obvious, but maybe at that point he’d been erring already. Maybe he should have spent his time speaking to someone else.

What were the chances that consulting a prisoner would lead to him unleashing a murderer on England a second time, after all?

His thoughts were interrupted by a sharp knock on the door—apparently purely perfunctory given that it swung open before he could answer. A Peeler he recognized—McDevitt, if he recalled (was it the afternoon shift already?)—and a scrap of a young man he didn’t.

“Begging your pardon, sir,” McDevitt said, “but this boy was apprehended messing with the body of our hanged man. Thought he might have been returning to do further mischief to it.”

“That’s not how it is.” The words were a low mumble, not really said to anybody. Not a defense, just a statement made to the far corner of the room.

Tom raised an eyebrow, carefully clearing the documents from his desk. “Why don’t you tell me how it was, Mr.—”

“Shelley.”

“Mr. Shelley.” Tom inclined his head in acknowledgement. His eyes flicked to McDevitt, hovering like an unhelpful sentinel. He was used to Peelers tailing after him on cases—had requested it sometimes even when it wasn’t a matter of course—but there was nothing that would make a man like Shelley shut down faster than a uniform. On the other hand, if he asked McDevitt to leave and he refused…there were few things that could fuck him quite so thoroughly. Best not to risk it. “You understand, Mr. Shelley, how it looks for you to have tampered with a body that was recently the victim of criminal mischief.”

“But I didn’t know that, did I?” Shelley’s shoulders hunched toward his ears, gaze stubbornly starboard.

“Of course you didn’t—how could you? But what else was Mr. McDevitt to assume?” Tom shrugged, “I don’t know who John Stanway was to you—”

“Wasn’t nobody to me. He was just you know”—a small, uncomfortable deliberation in the set of Shelley’s face, the last word falling limply into the air—“fresh.”

Tom’s eyes narrowed sharply. “You’re a body snatcher?”

“A resurrectionist.” The word was pronounced with great care, each syllable slightly overstaying its term on the lad’s tongue. A point of great pride for someone who wasn’t used to having enough of that to go around.

There was an obvious play, but a tricky one. Hyde had once said that he could smell the Whitechapel on him (which, come to think of it, might have been literal—he hadn’t been long out of Mary Jane’s arms and who knew what effects the serum left behind). He understood better now what he hadn’t wanted to understand then—however high he climbed, however much he did, however indispensable he made himself, those who’d been born to means and power would always know him for a bastard son of a whore who savoured his meals too much, cared for fine clothes too reverently, and wielded his education like a shield. The stink of poverty was somewhere beneath the skin.

The other side of the street saw things a little differently. A lad like Shelley would only notice that Tom’s hands were soft and ink-stained, that his clothes fit well, that he didn’t have the look of a man who’d had to skip meals or make compromises on comfort. That ‘new money’ was even a term told one all there was to know about the concerns of the upper class; any money was good money if you didn’t have any. Lads like Shelley didn’t have the luxury of worrying about how many generations a man’s power had behind it. Tom would be walking a difficult tightrope here. If he was too much Whitechapel, he’d lose any leverage—solidarity wasn’t a currency the boy could spend. If he was too much the end product of his university education, well, that might be worth something, but it wouldn’t be worth trusting.

Dear Lord, but interrogations were not his forte. At least Shelley wasn’t likely to kill him or McDevitt if it went wrong.

“I remember hearing about the resurrection men as a child,” he said, balancing each word carefully, weighing and measuring them even as they were voiced. “My mother was a very superstitious woman and I came to think of them as a sort of bogeyman—the kind of thing that happened if you weren’t good or pious enough and you died without a proper grave. Although, they might as well have been just bogeymen at that point. I confess that I wasn’t aware there were still any resurrection men working in England today.”

It was and wasn’t a question—an empty bit of air that Shelley might have filled if he were so inclined. He wasn’t, evidently. Tom cleared his throat and shrugged. “Of course, my perspective on the matter changed quite a bit while I was in school. Remarkable what an anatomist can learn from the right cadaver. It’s honestly a shame that the government took so long to open sufficient legitimate channels.” Oh, there was a reaction. A small one, a twitch of the lips, but telling all the same. He hadn’t liked that. It hadn’t been what Tom was going for, but it was what he had to work with.

Hyde would have been better to play that angle; he had been very good at being irritating enough that you missed the trap in front of you. But Shelley wouldn’t know that he was just getting the cheap imitation. Tom raised an eyebrow, affecting a cloying amount of concern. “Oh dear. You do work for an anatomist, don’t you? Although, I don’t suppose many of them resort to grave robbing these days—”

Shelley stamped his foot, now visibly seething enough that McDevitt had laid a hand on his billy club. Tom shot the Peeler a hard look and hoped his intent carried. “Course I work for a fecking anatomist.” Shelley practically spat the words at him. He got the impression that he might have actually spat _on_ him if Tom weren’t safely behind his desk. “But I’m not going to tell you who he is, am I?”

“Because you think we’d arrest him?” Too far. Tom could see that before he’d even finished speaking. Shelley’s concern was likely well-founded; an anatomist who continued to smuggle bodies through illegitimate channels didn’t bode well and Tom had had more than enough of men of science who thought laws existed merely to be inconvenient. But that did little to help him with the case he’d already taken on.

“You can arrest me, if that’s what you want.” Shelley didn’t look much like he relished the prospect, but Tom supposed he couldn’t be faulted for loyalty, even if it turned out to be misplaced. “Don’t know why you care so much. Hardly the first dead bloke to be missing a hand. Not like I took it.”

That. That was something. Tom rubbed a hand over his forehead like he was massaging away an ache, trying not to show how the words had startled him. He’d been trying to figure out why someone would target Stanway’s body, but if other bodies were in the same condition…he really had been looking at this all wrong. “Is Stanway’s body where it ought to be, Constable?”

“Sir?”

Tom waved dismissively. “I don’t see any crime here that’s worth the paperwork. Why not let Mr. Shelley be on his way?” McDevitt looked doubtful, but he didn’t look like he was going to argue, which had to be good enough. If he was so caught up in petty criminality that he couldn’t see the bigger picture, that was his problem. After this was all over, it might be worth having a live link to this ‘anatomist’.

Another late stay at the Yard, another night where sleep remained elusive. He understood on a purely logical level that he wouldn’t be much good to anyone if he carried on like this, but he didn’t know how to stop. He didn’t know how to make his damned brain stop turning it over and over through the night. And he didn’t really want to; an unsolvable case was the least emotionally complicated thing he’d had to think about in quite some time.

After Shelley had left, he’d asked a couple of Peelers to go back to the prison and ask to see any other bodies of recently deceased convicts—anyone they could get a look at without actually resorting to exhumation. He wasn’t willing to disturb graves over a hunch, whatever the deceased might have done or been in life. Less than a hunch, even—he was essentially striking out in the dark on the basis of some muttered words that hadn’t even been intended as a real tip. It could have been Lord Griffin's party all over again (and, oh, there had been a monster there all along, but not the one he’d expected to find). But he was dreadfully aware that he had nothing else.

He wished he’d gone with them. It was a pointless wish; he likely wouldn’t have been much use unless they’d actually found a body for him to examine. But at three in the morning, the facts hadn’t sounded as convincing as they should have. He’d quite convinced himself that if he were only there, he’d have seen something that the Peelers would miss.

The end result was that he felt quite ambushed when Constable Bar-something made for him as soon as he walked through the door of Scotland Yard. On a slightly better day, he might have been able to dodge the conversation, but he’d had to pause at the door and blink his eyes into complying with the change in light. “Morning, Chief Inspector.”

“Constable.” Tom nodded, trying for a smile that he worried looked as bad as it felt. “Another busy morning, I take it?”

“Yes, strange goings on.” The Peeler leaned closer, seemingly pleased for the chance to indulge in gossip. “Another robbery last night.”

“Was there.” And Tom could have left it at that. He wasn’t a gossipmonger, he had no knack for small talk, and robberies never even made his desk. He could have left it at that, but he didn’t. Damn him. “Less lethal than the last one, I hope.”

“By half,” the Peeler said, a brief sober moment where he swallowed his glee. “Just one last night.”

Tom frowned. Once was an accident—something that could be put down to incompetence or carelessness. Amateur thieves who either didn’t know or didn’t care that there might have been staff in the way of their heist. Two robberies in two nights, each ending in murder…that was something different. That was a pattern. “And you’re sure it’s the theft that’s the point and not the murder? Didn’t Dr. Moreau say he’d lost nothing of value?”

“Nothing that couldn’t be replaced,” the Peeler corrected. “He was very specific.”

That didn’t sound specific at all from where Tom was standing and his frown deepened. “And do we know what was taken this time?”

“Apparently it was just one painting. The owners did not take it so well as Dr. Moreau did. The artist is apparently dead, so it’s quite irreplaceable or so they say.”

There was probably something pithy and suitably ambiguous that he could have said about valuing the art of dead men over actual dead men, but it took too much effort merely to hide his disgust. “I’m sure that’s very upsetting for them.”

“Right? That Hallworth fellow must have been really something, I guess.”

Tom froze. “I apologize, Constable—who did you say the artist was?”

Tom had never met Basil Hallward in person, but he still carried his name on his back. If he’d understood what Gray was sooner, if he’d just _looked_. He wondered if Hallward had figured it out, if that was why Gray had done…what he’d done.

 _Gray had that dirty old man wrapped around his finger as much as you were,_ Hyde’s voice said. _Though I don’t suppose it was his finger that had either of you so interested._ Tom dutifully ignored it as he stepped into the crime scene. It was only his own mind talking to him, after all. And it was only the truth.

The Peelers were and were not happy to have him here—territoriality at war with the basic human instinct to be relieved when someone else was willing to do the dirty work. If this case ever made it to him, there probably would have been a few more bodies first; he would have heard about it when it became a spree rather than just a sprint. But Hallward’s painting being stolen felt like a sign. Tom didn’t believe in coincidences. Not anymore.

“These wounds are precise.” He hovered his finger over the victim’s neck, patiently waiting for a hovering Peeler to peer at the area. Far be it for him to discourage curiosity. “Directly targeted to the carotid artery with the accuracy of a surgeon. But the size—closer to what you’d get from a needle used for knitting than one used for medicine.”

“You don’t think that was the weapon, do you?”

“I don’t, no. I’m not sure what it was.” He searched his pocket until he found a swab. Carefully, he scraped the skin at the edges of the wounds. “And there’s the lack of blood to consider as well, Constable. A puncture to the artery should have made an impressive mess, but he’s practically clean.” That was one word for it. But it wasn’t just a lack of stains or an unusually quick clot. Tom had seen his fair share of corpses; he hadn’t seen many this pale.

“Sir,” the Peeler said, hesitant, almost physically stumbling over the word. He had the look of someone expecting mockery. “Some of the lads were saying—I mean it looks like—but I know it’s impossible—”

“Who among us can say what’s possible.” Tom didn’t mock. He couldn’t even bring himself to temper the words with a smile. He knew what it looked like. His mother truly had been a superstitious woman and her rooms had often been lined with wild rose and hawthorn. She might have sprung for garlic if it wasn’t more likely to frighten away paying gentlemen. “They should have put me on this case earlier.”

He was on his way back to the Yard, nearly at the edge of the property, when he smelled it. Something like overcooked fatty pork but…off, somehow. A shiver ran down his spine like a cold spark of lightning. It didn’t make any sense, but he could have sworn he could smell burning flesh.

There was another surprise waiting for him at Scotland Yard. The Peelers who’d gone corpse hunting for him had evidently been successful, though not in the way he expected. Quite the opposite, actually.

“It was just lying there, like someone had thrown it away,” one of the Peelers was saying. “We weren’t sure if it was, you know, _his_ but—”

“It’s not,” Tom said and at least he could put confidence in that. “Too small.” Too old, as well. It was plain to see just from looking at it (from smelling it) that the hand had been around longer than a couple of days. A right hand, he noted absently, with the ends of each finger burned and blackened like matches had been held to them. No hope of identification by way of fingerprint, then. Maybe that had been the point.

He was up for another late evening at this rate, but at least it would finally be productive. Between the hand and the swabs, he had plenty to analyze, plenty of tests that would need to be run. He could have opted to delegate, but he had always enjoyed the lab work.

 _And I’m sure it’s nothing to do with control at all,_ Hyde’s voice said. _Come on, Tom. You and I both know you’d never hand over a case—any part of a case—willingly. You wouldn’t want anyone else to get the satisfaction of figuring it out._

Maybe. But considering they brought him the cases that others had failed to solve, he felt that it was at least earned.

Tom flinched back from the table, covering his nose and mouth with one hand, the stench of burnt flesh suddenly overwhelming. His first assumption was that he had messed up somehow, left the hand too close to a running burner, must have been too tired with the way he was practically swaying in his seat. Stupid.

And then he saw the hand, safely on the table. And he saw the burners, switched off. And the thought struck him that it didn’t really smell _burnt_ at all. It smelled like it was _burning_.

And then exhaustion struck him like a physical blow and darkness stole any other thoughts from him.

All in all, Tom had had worse awakenings. He felt weak, legs dragging, arms dangling bonelessly from over some unyielding thing squeezing against his chest. But at least he wasn’t assaulted with the overpowering scent of human waste this time. The thing around his chest squeezed tighter for a moment, jostling him at an odd angle and compressing his ribs. He coughed. The hold loosened.

“Tom?” He couldn’t decide, for a disorienting moment, if he’d actually heard the voice or imagined it. He kept still and silent, too afraid that it was the latter—too used to it. Better to let his head loll into the dragging lethargy than to answer and find himself alone. “Tom, if you’re awake, then it’s exceptionally rude for you to leave me to do all the work.”

He blinked, his eyes feeling crusted and heavy. From his sagging vantage point, the first thing he saw was the blood. It was pooled about the floor, spreading from dark shapes he knew for corpses. His feet had dragged through it, red trailing after them in uneven streaks. Sick saliva flooded his mouth and he swallowed desperately against it.

“None of that now.” He was lowered toward the floor with surprising care, but the changing angle did little to help his nausea. A hand brushed over his forehead, sweeping his hair away—cool, dry. He must have washed already. He would have used his hands; he always did. “I really don’t need you dehydrating yourself on top of everything else.”

Tom’s eyes rolled until they landed on a familiar green luminescence. “Hello, Hyde.” His voice was impressively steady, all things considered.

Hyde’s grin was little more than a slash among the shadows that coated his face. “Hello, Tom. Quite a mess you’ve got yourself into.”

“Am I meant to be grateful to find you here”—it suddenly occurred to him to wonder where ‘here’ was (home? the Yard? What had happened precisely?), though he tried not to wear his uncertainty too plainly, not in front of Hyde where any slip was a free fall—“looming over my unconscious body, surrounded by blood?”

“You ought to be grateful that most of the blood isn’t yours. It was almost _only_ yours, given you found a way to sleep through the whole thing. I’m going to need to look at that, by the way.” Hyde punctuated the statement with a hand on his neck and Tom flinched—not out of fear (though it should have been and it probably said terrible things about him that fear didn’t even enter into the equation) but an unexpected stinging pain. Hyde ignored the reaction and ripped his collar away. Quite literally: Tom heard the tear of fabric and felt the rush of cool air down to his chest.

“I liked that shirt,” he said without heat. He was too busy processing everything else to properly mourn it.

“It had someone’s blood on it.” Hyde turned his head with firm fingers, stretching the skin on his neck until he hissed through his teeth. “Oh, now that _is_ interesting.” Tom had a horrible feeling he knew exactly what had happened to his neck. Hyde, the sadist, didn’t allow him the space or time to even try for self-delusion. “Tell me, do you find yourself thirsting for the blood of the innocent?”

“Not particularly.”

Hyde clucked his tongue. “Always such a stick in the mud.” Hyde’s gaze roved over him with a surprising lack of lechery. That would have almost been easier to handle than the more clinical attention. His eyes locked onto Tom’s chest for a long moment. What Tom could see of his face was unreadable. “Someone’s shot you, Tom.”

Tom startled before he remembered the scar. Hyde could probably see it just fine, even in the dark. It was an act of great will not to bring a hand to cover it. There had been no grand rescue for that one, when he had lain bleeding out in Dr. Kemp’s house. He’d truly thought he’d die. He might have come even closer than that tonight, if it hadn’t been for Hyde. That marked at least the third time he’d saved Tom's life, though if he had another purpose in doing so this time, he couldn’t yet see it.

His eyes trailed, almost unwillingly, to Hyde’s covered chest. He wondered if Hyde’s own bullet wounds had left scars. He wondered if the serum would let them.

“My eyes are up here, Tom,” Hyde said, as if he didn’t have Tom half undressed. Tom must not have responded quickly enough for him because next thing Hyde’s fingers were hooking under his chin and tilting his face up. His touch felt scorching next to the chill of the air. “There you are.”

“Main de gloire,” Tom said. He carefully didn’t move when Hyde pulled his burning fingers away.

“That’s either a mispronunciation,” Hyde said, “or a myth.”

“So are monsters.” Hyde’s lips twitched at that—Tom couldn’t tell toward what expression. “I have never just fallen asleep at work. Never.” Tom shifted, pushing himself up against the side of a desk, stubbornly ignoring Hyde’s disgruntlement. “They’ve been taking hands that have committed murder and burning them. Putting everyone on the property to sleep. That’s how they haven’t been caught.” He should have realized as soon as he recognized the smell or after he’d seen the hand. He should have seen how it was connected.

“All that effort for a little blood? Not that I don’t think you make an attractive prospect, Tom, but surely there are easier targets.”

“There’ve been robberies.” Not robberies with incidental murder or murder with incidental robberies. The goal was both: the blood and the spoils. It had to be. “There must have been something they wanted here.”

Hyde made a great show of looking around; his disdain was tangible. “Oh, yes. A regular treasure trove.”

“There are my case files.” A possibility. He’d been investigating both cases, maybe getting too close. And then, a worse thought: “The Black Museum.” Hallward’s painting. The man who had captured Dorian Gray with his art, too literally. And Moreau. Moreau. Hadn’t he socialized in the same circles as Jekyll and Utterson? If that was it, if the link between the thefts was the connection between the takings and London's most infamous, then treasure trove hardly covered it.

Tom was attempting to surge up before he’d thought the movement through. Hyde barely needed to apply any strength to push him back down, dark spots swimming in his vision. “You’re anemic, Tom. I think you’ll find that rushing anywhere is quite beyond you right now.” He shifted aside, giving Tom a better view of the room as the early fringes of dawn began to seep in. They were unrestricted by the window, which had been smashed open with considerable violence. “Besides, if that was their goal, they never got anywhere near it. They might send more, if we are to presume that at least one of them might have remained outside to burn your Hand of Glory. But doubtless they will wait for nightfall.” Three bodies. Tom could see them clear enough now. Staked because of course Hyde knew his lore, but more than that because of course he'd wanted to be thorough about it. Messy yet meticulous; nothing was left to chance. Some of the blood was already drying to rust against the floor.

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it,” Tom muttered, barely thinking about the words before he spoke them.

“Scripture, Tom? Really?”

Tom let his eyes linger over where Hyde’s features were being brought into relief by the twilit glow. One of the shadows on his cheek now looked distinctly like a bruise. There were cuts along his arms, small bits of glass that caught the light still hanging about some of them. He would heal well and quickly, Tom knew. He likely didn’t even feel it. The bruise was terribly hard to stop looking at. “Why are you here, Hyde?”

“I can’t want to visit a friend?”

There was always a double meaning in Hyde’s words, but this was disappointingly obvious. Tom allowed himself a wry smile. “One of Jekyll’s friends, I presume. I do hope he’s less prone to mass slaughter than the last one I met.”

“Tom.” The emphasis Hyde put on his name was almost scandalized and yet delighted. Then again, no one enjoyed a good scandal quite like Hyde (he featured in more than enough of them, the narcissist). “Well, you have grown in our time apart. I’m sorry to have missed it.” Tom could have said that Hyde had never really left him, that he probably never would even if it all ended in the ugly way it was inevitably meant to. But he suspected Hyde knew that. Had intended it. And for that reason alone, he’d take it to his grave. “For what it’s worth, I’m glad I was here for this.” He brushed a hand over Tom’s neck, thumb lingering over the edges of the wound. Tom didn’t flinch, didn’t pull away even a little. Hyde sounded terribly sincere, which was precisely why it would be unwise to believe him.

“Are you?” The words felt numb on Tom’s lips, falling out without being properly shaped. He wasn’t sure what answer he expected. He wasn’t sure what answer he wanted.

“Aren’t you?” Hyde smiled at him, wicked and gleaming under those green, green eyes. The hand on Tom’s neck moved to the back, gripping firmly in a way that probably should have felt threatening and wasn’t.

Tom wanted to say ‘yes’ and even more badly wanted to say ‘no’ when, truthfully, he would never be sure of the truth of either. So, he said nothing instead. And when Hyde’s face moved close enough for them to share breath, Tom didn’t flinch. He didn’t pull away, even a little.

When Hyde kissed him, Tom closed his eyes instinctually, cutting off the rising sun. Even then, it wasn’t completely dark, starbursts of light playing against the backs of his eyelids. There was probably a metaphor to be made of that—Hyde might have even enjoyed it. When he gave Tom his tongue back, he’d have to remember to tell him.

**Author's Note:**

>  **The Canon:** The comic takes place in a universe where Jekyll/Hyde survived the events of Stevenson's tale, though it plays fairly fast and loose with the canon. Jekyll, supposedly back in control without the serum, has been secretly kept under Scotland Yard under the watchful eye of his old friend, John Utterson. Thomas Adye, a young inspector with a talent for forensics, is assigned to work the Jack the Ripper case. After a confrontation with the Ripper where he seemingly pulls off preternatural feats, Adye consults with Jekyll about the case--the Clarice Starling to the good doctor's Hannibal Lecter. The stakes are high, Jekyll is playing a game of his own devising, and Tom must determine for himself what he believes about good and evil.
> 
>  **[Tom:](https://imgur.com/TsmYVLn)** Thomas Adye is a promising young inspector for Scotland Yard. He's "smugly 'moral'", naive, and all too eager to prove himself, but also genuinely intelligent, compassionate, and unrelentingly tenacious, even in the face of grave personal danger. Tom is an illegitimate son from a poor background who was provided an education by his wealthy father and aspired to fit in with high society ever since. Tom's partnership with Hyde leads him to uncomfortable revelations about both himself and the parts of society he so idolized. Tom does come into his own by the end of the story, taking a third option when presented with a morally reprehensible choice, telling the powers that be where to shove it, and acknowledging Hyde as a friend even as he remains committed to taking him down should he return to trouble the streets of London. The end of the story suggests that a newly promoted Chief Inspector Adye will go on to investigate more strange cases, including the Invisible Man (naturally, considering he shares the name of Wells's chief of police from the original novel). [The blurb for the unpublished sequel](https://tinyurl.com/yydbrflc) also gives us some tantalizing insight into the dynamic Tom was intended to have with one Dorian Gray.
> 
>  **[Hyde:](https://imgur.com/kuspQAt)** The divide between the two is not always clear here (and there is no visual distinction between them), but it's pretty explicit that the personality known as "Hyde" was in the driver's seat for as long as Tom's been working with him. This version of Hyde is as hedonistic and irreverent as one might expect, but he's not without the ability to charm and the physical threat he presents is sharpened by a cunning wit. In this version of the tale, Hyde's serum gives him enhanced physical capabilities to the extent of blatantly being superpowers. Hyde is prone to lewd commentary and philosophical musings in equal measure. He takes a sincere interest in Tom and makes a game of seeing how far he can push him over moral lines, but seems genuinely satisfied as long as Tom is making his own choices, even if it leaves Hyde at a disadvantage. The last thing he does in the comic is visit the corrupt former Chief Inspector, with the implication that Hyde had a hand in Tom's promotion--evidently not holding a grudge over Tom having shot him three times.
> 
>  **Other Notes:**  
>  -The folklore that I took as inspiration for this case (aside from general vampire lore) was the Hand of Glory. The matter was somewhat complicated by the changes that were made to executions for capital crimes in the mid-1800s (since the comic's timeline puts us in the 1890s), but that just made the case even stranger.
> 
> -Tom's first scene in the comic, where we're introduced to him by way of Constable Tamberly pulling him from church and Tom knowing before he's even been told that there's been a murder, has always stuck with me, so I wanted to play on it a bit here.
> 
> -In the comic, the only constable Tom ever refers to by name is Tamberly (who is one of two officers killed when Tom's confrontation with a suspect goes bad), whether out loud or in internal narration. Everyone else is just lumped into being ~~"small-minded"~~ ~~"damn fool"~~ "Peelers". While I'd hope Tom's relationship with the constabulary is less mutually disdainful at this point, he doesn't strike me as someone who has a lot of close friends at the office.
> 
> -I'm very interested in the implication that Tom, already having had Hyde get under his skin, would find Dorian Gray's philosophy very compelling (and, taking some liberty, possibly find Mr. Gray compelling as well). I imagine that certain revelations about Gray would not leave Tom unaffected and while I didn't want (or have time) to get into the full details of that case here, I wanted to at least allude to its impact.
> 
> -Dr. Moreau made a cameo in the comic.
> 
> -Adye was shot and killed by Griffin in _The Invisible Man_. While I wasn't going to kill Tom off (obviously), I wanted to at least have a nod in here.


End file.
